Coronavirus

Adequately Vaccinating Americans Would Take 10 Years at Current Pace

In other coronavirus news: Vice President-elect Kamala Harris got her shot; the pandemic has left many Americans 'stuck in time'

The Trump administration's COVID-19 vaccine distribution program needs a major shot in the arm because at the current rate, it would take almost 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to get the pandemic under control, a jarring new NBC News analysis showed Tuesday.

The goal of Operation Warp Speed, a private-public partnership led by Vice President Mike Pence to produce and deliver safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines to the public, is to ensure that 80 percent of the country's 330.7 million people get the shots by late June.

To meet that goal, a little more than 3 million people would have to get the shots each day, the math shows.

But so far, only about 2 million people — most of them front-line health care workers and some nursing home residents — have gotten their first shots of the 11.5 million doses that were delivered in the last two weeks, a review by NBC News of data from federal and state agencies showed.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com.

Contact Us